• Execute MaLa
• The options dialog will open
• Point the MAME executable to your mame.exe file
• MaLa will create a mame.ini and a mame.xml file for you if not found
• Enter a rom path and a snap path
• Close the dialog and MaLa will ask you to refresh the main game list.

Accessing more options

Just click with your right mouse button somewhere on the background to open
a popup menu.

FAQ

What are the computer requirements for MaLa?

Swindus runs MaLa on a Pentium III/650MHz with 512MB and it works well.

How can I go back to the options dialog?

Simply press the right mouse button somewhere on the screen and in the
appearing menu choose "Options".

What are the supported image formats?

Png, jpg, gif and bmp.

What are the supported video formats?

Avi (all installed codecs), mpg and wmv.

Does MaLa change any registry options or any other "hidden" settings on my
computer?

There are no hidden settings. All files and settings reside in the MaLa
folder and a copy of the complete folder to another computer should work fine.

Does MaLa work with CPViewer?

Yes, MaLa works with CPViewer, CPMaker and Johnny5. Also with the
additional MaLa Hardware
MaLa can light up the used buttons for each game and shows the functions of
the controls on a LCD.

Does MaLa implicitly recognize the KE-72 encoder or other encoders like it
does the IPAC?

There is no implicit IPAC/JPAC support. MaLa supports all keyboard encoders
and if you are able to program your encoder on the command line the 'on the
fly' programming should work.

Of course you can define all keys by yourself in the options dialog on the
controller tabsheet.

Controller setup

To delete the predefined settings just click with the
right mouse button on the edit
fields.

Click with the left mouse button to
map a controller to a MaLa function. The color changes to grey, in order to
show that an input is expected. Move a joystick or press a button on your
control panel.

The 'Shift' key works like the Shift
key of your computers keyboard. All shifted keys are represented in blue and
will work only in combination with the 'Shift' key.

To set a shifted key click into an edit field and press the 'Shift' key +
another one. The settings from the picture above will work in the following
way: The left/right arrow keys will trigger a movement of 1 step in the game
list. 'Strg' + left/right arrow will trigger a faster movement.

This is the MaLa default controller mapping which works out of the box with
the jamma standard.

MAME Configuration

MAME configuration is done on several tab sheets in the options dialog.
Below is an example of a basic MAME configuration.

Select the MAME executable by clicking the '...' button. MaLa extracts the
version from the exe file and displays the version info in the title field.

If no ini file and/or XML rom info file is found MaLa asks you to create them.
You can create the ini file at any time by clicking on the 'Config' button or
the XML file by clicking on the 'Create' button.

MaLa uses additional information from some optional files (catver.ini,
controls.ini, history.dat) for the game list display. If you place these files
in your MAME directory MaLa will use them automatically. If not MaLa will
inform you and you can add the file locations later.

Your dialog should look like this now:

Now enter up to 3 differrent locations of your rom files and enable sub
directory search if needed. This information is used by MaLa to collect and
display only games with a rom available. Activate the option
'Only games with rom' to use this
option. 'Only working games' means don't
collect games with a bad status. 'Only
master' collects only master and no clones.

With the exclude parameter it is
possible to exclude games by description. An example is to enter 'japan' to
exclude all games with 'japan' in the game description.

On the 'Optional' tab sheet you can enter the file locations of the optional
ini files if they are not placed in the MAME directory.'Window state' configures the
appearance of the MAME window. Use 'normal' if you have troubles to start MAME
to watch the MAME messages.

The last step is to enter a valid path of the pictures if used by your layout.
Now close the dialog with 'OK'.

MaLa asks you to refresh the main game list. Yes is a good choice! ;-)

Emulator Configuration

Click the 'new' button to create a new emulator. Enter the name of the
emulator and click on the 'OK' button.

Choose the emulator executable by clicking on the '...' button.

Select a rom path for your emulator. MaLa collects all extension found in this
directory and adds them to the rom extensions field. Additional you can enable
a sub directory search.

Now it's time to define how MaLa should call the emulator. You can use the
following placeholder to define a command line:
- %path%: Full path of rom file
- %rom%: Name of rom file
- %parent%: Name of parent rom file
- %ext%: Extension of rom file

Click on the button (Presets) next to the edit field to paste some default
command lines or emulator specific command lines. To update your preset file
visit the emulator
presets page.

Additional you can add pre and post commands to an emulator. Use the same
placeholder for the pre/prost commands. Right click on listboxes to
add/edit/delete/move commands in the lists.

If you want to run batch files there
is no need for an emulator executable, just leave it empty.

The same goes for shortcuts to run pc games
or any other windows application. Use 'lnk' as rom extension and %rom% only
for the command line.

On the 'Options' tab sheet you can add folders for the emulator pictures and
videos and define some hotkeys to control the emulator.

After closing the options dialog with 'OK' select the new emulator in the
popup or MaLa menu:

Then create/refresh the main game list of the selected emulator with the
command 'Refresh main game list'.

Layout switch/naming

Under default conditions MaLa looks for the layouts in the program directory
and uses one layout for all emulators and game lists.
To switch to another layout just select it in the listbox and close the dialog
with 'OK'.

To use different layouts for each emulator and/or game list activate the 'Auto
layout switch'. Then name the layout files (*.mll) in the following
way:

emulatorname.mll and/or
emulatorname_gamelistname.mll

Emulator name for MAME is always mame.
Game list 'All games': mame_all games.mll
Game list 'Shooter': mame_shooter.mll
To use one layout for all MAME game lists, name it
mame.mll

For an emulator named C64:
Game list 'All games': c64_all games.mll
Game list 'Shooter': c64_shooter.mllTo use one layout for all C64 game lists, name it
c64.mll

For an emulator named Sega Genesis:
Game list 'All games': sega genesis_all
games.mll
Game list 'Shooter': sega
genesis_shooter.mll
To use one layout for all Sega Genesis game lists, name it
sega genesis.mll

The jukebox layout must be named
jukebox.mll

• If the layout switch on game list switch is activated and the layout for the
selected game list is not found MaLa loads the emulator layout.
• If the emulator layout is not found MaLa loads the default (standard.mll)
layout.

The option 'Use layout names for directory
names' toggles the use of folders for the layout content files (images,
sounds). If it is activated these files must reside in a folder with the same
names as the mll file.

Control Panel Viewer command line
• %rom% = Name of rom file
• %parent% = Name of parent rom file

Encoder programming command line
• %config% = Name of config file with extension
• %rom% = Name of rom file

MalaGamelist

With the MaLa Game List Editor you can create/edit game lists for any
emulator easily. On the left side you can always see the complete list of all
games for the selected emulator. You can switch the emulator from the menu
'Emulator'. On the right side you see the game list which is edited.

The 'Gamelist' menu:

Adding games

There several ways to add games to the destination list:
- Double click on a game in the source
list.
- Drag & drop a game or games from the
source to the destination list
- Select games in the source list and click
on the arrows between the lists.

- Add selection: For MAME only. Add
games by genre, control type and so on.

- Add by name content: Add games with
specific sub strings in the name, for example [U] or (Japan).
- Add game list: Simply add another
game list to the destination.

Editing games

- Double click on a game in the
destination list to edit the name, the rom path and the extension for this
game.
- Remove brackets from names: Removes
(...) or [...] or {...} or all of them.

- Replace part of name: Search and
replace parts of names.

Removing games

- Right click in the destination list
and select 'Delete' from the popup menu to delete a game or all selected
games.

- Remove selection: For MAME only.
Remove games by genre, control type and so on.

- Use the function Remove by name content
from the 'Gamelist' menu to delete more than one game with a specific sub
string in the name in one step.
- Exclude game list: Remove all games
included in a loaded game list from the destination list.

Loading and saving names

You can save all your edits to a file. So it is possible to load and rematch
all your names again on new created game lists.

Connecting the MaLa Hardware

Plug in your MaLa Hardware while MaLa is running or before starting MaLa.

At the top of the tabsheet you can see a list of all connected boards. You can
refresh the list by clicking on the button 'Refresh device list' if needed. In
this example I connected two boards (LCD/LED16 ID:0D10FD1 and LED32
ID:0A20EB2) with the computer.

Now you have to set the MaLa Hardware ID's to the 'hardware slots' in MaLa.
Just click on the 'Set' button to connect an ID to a 'hardware slot'. Only the
first 'hardware slot' can have a LCD connected.

If you use a LCD/LED16 board enable the use of a LCD and setup your LCD type
(Columns and rows). Leave it disabled if you use a LED32 board in the first
'hardware slot'.

Enable also the use of LEDs to light up your LEDs. This will affect the LEDs
of all connected boards.

Now restart MaLa and you should see a greeting text on the LCD. The next step
is to define some LCD screens to define what is displayed on the LCD and to
configure the LEDs. This is discussed on another help page, not available yet.

Hotkeys

You can convert, block and send keystrokes to a running emulator with
MaLa. So it is possible to map the 'esc' key to 'Alt + F4' to close the
emulator.

Map any key or key combination to another. Here is an example that maps
the 'F' key to 'Alt + Enter' to toggle the fullscreen mode of an emulator.

Catching of keystrokes is another functionality to avoid triggering of
unwanted actions in the emulator. These keys will not send to the emulator
anymore.

Filter

In MaLa you can use up to 4 filter to filter the games displayed in the game
list. The filter settings can be accessed within the MaLa menu with your
arcade controls any time.

The genre submenu:

Filter settings can be saved to so called Filter Sets and also accessed within
the MaLa Menu. Below is an example that shows only vertical games from the
year 1988.

That means you just have to select one filter set to set 4 filter criteria at
once.

Layout Definable images

The selectable naming of the definable images allows you to display various
game properties as image. All strings used for naming of definable images are
converted to a filename compatible format and not allowed chars are replaced
with a underscore '_'. Some examples:

Also enable the transparency property of the definable images in the layout
editor to display round or non rectangular forms.

MaLa Tree

You can create a emulator/game list tree with the MaLa Tree tool. Using this
tool with some nice graphics in your menu layout could result in a very nice
looking layout such as this example:

Arcade menu:

Controller detection

Detection is triggered by the joystick buttons you have allocated to 1 up,
1 down and start. MaLa will then rotate to the corresponding side
automatically. If you wish you can also have the game list switch at the same
time the screen rotates. For example 1) if you have controls on three or more
sides of a cocktail table you may wish that only horizontal games be shown on
some sides and vertical on others.
2) If you have installed different types of controllers on different sides of
your table then you may choose to also have the game list change as well when
the screen rotates. This would be useful if you only want a relevant game list
of games that able to be played using those controls the screen is rotated to.

MaLa is free and totally unrestricted, but if you find yourself using it
regularly, any token donation is certainly welcome.